redFlags

IntifadaNYC: Racist campaign claims Khalil Gibran principal

The resignation of Debbie Almontaser as principal of the proposed Arab language school in Brooklyn has caused a great deal of controversy. The DOE replaced her with Danielle Salzberg. There's so much stuff flying it is hard to keep track of it all. An interesting interview by Amy Goodman posted on Democracy Now can be found here. Also this piece written by Almontaser, not long after 9/11.

By Steve Quester
UFT chapter leader
P.S. 372/418K The Children’s School
from Education Notes Online

Imagine...
A veteran Latina educator, with a years-long record of service supporting Latino/a youth and building bridges between Latino/a and non-Latino/a communities, is slated to be principal of a new middle school with a focus on Hispano-Caribbean studies and Spanish language. She endures months of vitriolic attacks from right-wing hate websites and blogs, and from the Murdoch news organizations. Finally, the Murdoch media uncover that she’s on the board of an organization that shares an office with a Latina girls’ empowerment organization. The organization has produced a T-shirt with the image of Che Guevara and the words “Hasta la victoria siempre.” The Murdoch media point out (rightly) that the “victoria” to which Che referred was the violent overthrow of all capitalist governments, including the U.S. The media demand that the educator condemn the T-shirt, but instead she says that the girls’ intention was to point to the victory of tolerance and coexistence over anti-Latino/a bias in New York. The media howl. The educator quickly apologizes, admitting that she did not take into account the effect that the image of Che has on Cuban-American refugees of Castro’s oppression.

After the apology, the United Federation of Teachers president [hypothetically Randi Weingarten —JB], who had been supportive of the new middle school and its principal, is quoted condemning the educator’s initial defense of the T-shirt...

23 students arrested occupying military recruitment center

Received from the Slamista listserve: At noon, Monday, March 12, 2007, nearly 100 students from area universities marched to the armed forces recruiting station on 157 Chambers Street. Twenty-three members of Students for a Democratic Society entered and occupied the recruiting station shutting down recruitment activity for nearly two hours. 

Carl Dix: 50 Reasons

Campus Strikes Against the War

Starting with a call from UC Santa Barbara – students around the country are planning strikes Thursday, February 15 against the escalation and war in Iraq. World Can't Wait has an excellent student strike resource page with a list of participating campuses and materials to help activists and there's a February 15 blog up and running with updates (and where I found the picture above).

From the initial call out of UC—Santa Barbara:

We, the students and staff of UC Santa Barbara, want to challenge our generation to put an end to the U.S. conquest of Iraq. Right now most opposition to the war is only symbolic. Congress is being sheepish and choosing not to end the war because we, the people, are not forcing them to act.

People's historian Howard Zinn says:

"I would like to endorse the idea of a student strike on campuses all over the country on Feb. 15, to rekindle the flame of protest that flared up all over the world  on that date four years ago, as  ten million people protested the pending invasion of Iraq by the United States. A student strike at this time would be a great boost to the movement against the war and would send a signal to Congress that it should listen to the American people and act immediately to stop this ugly war."

Join in where you can. If you're on a campus where nothing is currently planned, get involved now. It's going to be a hot spring~!

  Download STRIKE flyers
  PDF — easy to print & localize!
  Four different flyers!
  Put 'em up everywhere!

It's worse than you think: Video Teach-In on why the Bush regime must be stopped

Webcast of the World Can't Wait NYC teach-in "It's Worse Than You Think."

If all the recent changes brought by the Bush administration, and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, has started to blur: this Oct. 30 teach-in is a necessary summation of what the stakes really are.

Where the Bush regime is taking the world and why it must be stopped, featuring:

Larry Everest
author, "Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda"

 Bill Goodman
Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights
   
Chris Hedges
author of bestseller "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"
   
Cristina Page
author, "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex"
   
Les Roberts
An author of the recent study revealing that over 600,000 Iraqis have died since war began.

Watch | Donate

Click here for a list of dozens of teach-ins around the country through Nov. 5

Click here for more on organizing showings

And one black flag for Brad Will

Covering the ongoing popular uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico, NYC Indymedia journalist Brad Will  was shot and killed at the Santa Lucia Barricade by paramilitaries repotedly linked to the besieged state governor's paramilitary forces. Several others were also shot and killed during the incident, including a schoolteacher associated with the militant teachers' union whose strike precipitated the political crisis on Mexico's southern Pacific Coast.

Brad Will was in Oaxaca to take video and report on the state-wide popular uprising and teacher strike that began in June with the violent attempted removal of the striking teachers from their encampment in the center of Oaxaca City by federal police forces. Since then, the teachers and other groups formed the APPO, the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People, and have called for the removal of the governor of state Ulises Ruiz of the PRI.

Brad Will is the first North American Indymedia journalist to be killed while reporting. There have been several other incidents where IMCs were targeted, and Lenin Cali Nájera, an Ecuadorian Indymedia activist, was killed in 2004.

Always skeptical, never the cynic; Brad Will was a committed anti-authoritarian who always sought to bring the stories of people in struggle to the whole world. An early volunteer with the Indymedia movement, his coverage of local struggles, such as the movement for public space and gardens in New York, were only one part of his internationalist vision. From the tree sits obstructing clear-cutting in the Pacific Northwest to the indigenous, proletarian uprisings of Bolivia, Brad was there to help people tell their own stories.

Brad Will died as he lived, on the barricades armed only with a video camera.

Read Brad's last communication from Oaxaca.

Adapted from reports on Indymedia by Jed Brandt. [photo by Erin Siegal]

On Your Own Terms: An open letter to activists regarding World Can't Wait

Jed Brandt writes:

This letter is a personal appeal for your active involvement with World Can't Wait, on your own terms, starting now.

Momentum is building for the Oct. 5 protests, but many activists have yet to step up -- or even investigate for themselves the scope of this effort. The lull in the protest movement since the start of the war, exactly as the population has turned against this disaster is more confusing than it should be and, I'd argue, related to a passive orientation towards the elections.

Let's stop waiting. Let's stop pretending like Bush will change his mind or the Democrats will "grow a spine." They have backbone, but they don't as a party represent us. After literally years of this same wishing game, we have to learn the lessons that are there in plain sight. That's right. I'm using the imperative "we have to." We have to act consciously, resist, and stop politically pussyfooting around.

Too many of us have been involved in day-to-day activism that isn't taking into consideration the political root of the current situation. Massive popular revulsion at the legalization of torture,  surveillance without warrant -- and Bush's recent legislation exempting himself and his cabinet from war crimes prosecution must be galvanized, mobilized, given tangible expression. This requires experienced activists, media workers, community-based organizers. It requires that we put distrust aside, and work like what we do matters.

If you are not now involved, please question why. What is holding "radical" movements from radical action? It certainly isn't that people aren't ready to move. Hardly. The problem as I see it is in the habits of the organized left and its refusal to get with the times, leave comfort zones and challenge all the orthodoxies of political passivity.

Lebanon, Palestine and a War Against the World: RESIST

War against the world? I am ready to resist. Knowing I am not alone, there must be mass resistance.

There is no simple way to describe the anger, the dispair, for the Arab people that I feel. Imperialism is a monster. Now reckless in its weakness, an anti-people machine.

Within the United States, Great Britain and to a much lesser extent Israel, there are millions of people who are opposed in their very bones to endless war with the world. Not just these crimes, so undeniable, racist and unrelenting. But the whole bloody history.

Now. This is not a cry against one bombing or one war. It is to condemn no people to the worst of their rulers and even own selves. It is a world system, backed by nuclear weapons and black ops. A cynical, de-humanized media propaganda that runs right into people's minds a culture of supremacy, well-minded ignorance and the cold surrender of our common human heart. I am refusing to accept these ground rules, the devil's choice our government always demands. We must begin to actually resist this war.

A movement against war can be nothing but a movement against empire, the economic vampirism and fake-ass "clash of civilization" bullshit. It must no longer just declare, opt out, reject. It must refuse through resistance. Our governments will not listen to reason because their interests are not our own. They will never listen.

Students out on the west coast have non-violently disrupted military supply chains at the Port of Olympia. Counter-recruiting puts the issue among the youth most at risk here. Opposition must now turn to not just to rallies of opposition, but demonstrations of manifest resistance to the war machine.

Participants in this action want to emphasize and make visible to people in the United States and beyond that the United States government does not represent them, that there is a significant group of people who will not allow U.S. aggression to occur in their name. It is an attempt to raise the social cost of the war by showing through actions the growing forms of resistance that will occur in the United States as the war continues. The participants in this action and its advocates were primarily younger people.

If Israel can drop American bombs on Lebanese roads killing the very refugees they are creating, then we can at least put our bodies on the streets and roads of America. Why should traffic proceed as normal? Why should normality be assumed, or shifted off to a fear of terrorism? Why should professors of the status quo direct fall's campus syllabus? You know, there are thousands of people in the USA who have blockaded whole cities. The knowledge is out there, but the political will to lead is lacking. [Opinions stated above are my own —JB]

On the jump, A World To Win News Service puts out a detailed analysis of the causes and implications of this war. The murder of Lebanon is not simply another grotesquery of Zionism, which it certainly is -- but it is Israel's very purpose as a state. This is the US/UK war. It is the larger conflict, it is the same war, the logic of imperialism. Here in America we must take heed of this. This is the best analysis I have seen, coming as it does from the revolutionary, internationalist and proletarian perspective.